08/23/2026
Sermon Transcript Matthew 16:13-20 "Who Do You Say He Is?"
In the first Toy Story movie back in 1995, Barbie was scripted to come and to rescue Woody and Buzz in her hot pink Corvette
…but Mattel said no.
The reason?
Because when girls play with Barbie, they put their own personality into the doll, or they make up a personality and story for her.
Mattel didn’t want to take that away.
And they wanted to keep the doll neutral allowing every little girl
to voice her own personal Barbie.
Your Barbie can
be wise and independent.
Your Barbie can
be soft and gentle and loving.
Your Barbie can
be fierce and strong.
She can be anything you imagine her to be.
Just like Jesus today.
We like our Jesus
to be neutral, beige and vague,
like a fresh politician
…a blank canvas onto whom we can all paint our own idea of Jesus
…chose his voice,
make him your own bespoke,
personal Jesus.
Fit Jesus in where we want him.
We are the center of everything.
So make god in our own image…give him our own voice and personality.
In today’s reading,
when Jesus asks his 12:
‘who do people say
that the Son of Man is’,
He gets answers based on what they see Jesus saying and doing:
—maybe he’s John the Baptist come back to life. That’s what Herod feared.
—maybe he’s Elijah come back, last we saw Elijah he was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot.
—maybe Jeremiah, that’s a good guess since Jesus is being rejected by his own people just like Jeremiah was.
Jesus then asks:
“But who do you say that I am.”
That’s the most important question for each and every one of us. “Who do you say He is?”
Jesus asks these questions,
in Caesarea Philippi,
24 miles north of the sea of Galilee.
To their right, they see the magnificent marble temple built to worship Caesar Augustus.
To their left is the grotto of the mythological Greek god, Pan.
And right in front of them
stands the living God
in the flesh of Jesus
asking them what they say about Him.
We’ve always had lots of god-options, an all-you-can-eat buffet of gods
showroom-ed before us
to pick from,
to follow,
and to serve.
�And if we can’t fine one that fits,
we can always make up another one for ourselves.
He asked them who He was and He asks you too. Who is this Son of Man to you? Who do you say He is?
You have an answer
and so does everyone else around you,
so many ideas about who Jesus is…
…ideas that come from Scripture
blended and mixed with
logic and reason and
myth and the opinion of others
and our feelings and desires.
All mixed together to create all kinds of Jesuses.
Here are just a few answers
you’ll hear
or you may say yourself
to the question of ‘who is this Jesus’:
………
a beautiful teacher who taught good thoughts and love
a compassionate soul
a great example
a moral leader
a guide, a guru, a really good guy to follow and emulate…
one who shows us what to do to get to God by what you do,
and boosts you up a ladder toward a god who is far and out of reach.
a healer
mender of the mental
fixer of the feeble
a demon evictor
death un-doer
grave robber
wind ruler
storm stiller
water walker
wine maker
bread machine
vine snipper
miracle maker
hippie
beatnik
communist
capitalist
bleeding heart
authoritarian
warrior
wimp
Thor
Zeus
Kal-el
a Jedi knight
Aslan the Lion
Gandalf
Frodo
Neo
a leader
revolutionary
rebel
radical
table flipper
a sweet 8 lb, 6 oz baby
who never grew up
and makes no demands
our pet
our puppy
our house elf
indentured servant
who owes us
for what we bring to him.
a genie who fulfills our wishes
the new and better Moses who leads us into a promised land flowing
with milk and money
crusader of truth, justice, and the American way.
an admiral who will aim our weapons and annihilate our enemies.
a friend of sinners
or just a sinner like the rest of us.
a seeker of lost, Israelite sheep
a fiction, a figment of the imagination,
made up by the early church
a man, a good man,
but a mere man…
definitely not God.
a lunatic with an inflated ego
a loser
a dead failure…decomposed into dust somewhere in middle eastern soil.
a spirit-being, an idea resurrected
only in our hearts and minds.
someone who asks nothing of you
couldn’t care less about you
doesn’t know you.
a lover
your boyfriend
your homeboy
a terrifying judge
a pest
a pursuer
a problem
a real pain in the neck
…………
That’s quite a lot of opinions about Jesus.
And if you are having trouble sorting fact from fiction about Jesus,
there’s room for you at
ALPHA on Tuesday nights
starting in September…
there’s room for you in Sunday and Monday and Wednesday and Thursday Bible studies and youth group and Sunday school.
More time in God’s Word helps.
so does
less time in your own head,
less time listening to the world,
less time listening to Satan.
Jesus is not just one option among many no matter what your heart and your mind tells us.
God the Father
gives Peter the infallible
answer to who this is:
Jesus is “the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.”
Not a dead idol
but the living God.
Not an idea
but a person.
Not a fiction,
a fact.
Jesus the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.
Christ is not his last name.
It is his job, his calling, his purpose…
all wrapped in one title, one name…
the Christ in NT Greek
and the Messiah in OT Hebrew.
Two different languages but one title, one name.
Jesus is The Christ, the Messiah,
the chosen one, anointed,
appointed by God to do His work.
The Christ is the king
come to do God’s work in His world, come to save His hostile, rebellious, sinful creatures.
The Christ is
…the one we’ve been waiting for.
…the one we’ve hoped for.
He is the Christ…”in whom all the promises of God find their yes.”
[2 Cor 1:20]
He is the Christ,
the one sent and used by God
to fulfill all his purposes
to save his people
and deliver us
from all that would destroy us.
He is the Christ
who brings about the last days,
the end times…
the times when God
comes to repair His corrupt creation, save it from sin and destruction,
and then reign over His renewed creation as King.
If you are looking for God,
you will find Him right here
in Jesus.
There’s more to Him being Christ:
The big reveal comes next week,
in the second half of this reading,
when Jesus tells Peter
and the rest of us
exactly how He will do
this job of saving us, of being Christ.
It involves…
a kiss of betrayal
swords and clubs
bound wrists
fleeing friends
show trials
kangaroo courts
crowd demands
a prisoner swap
lashing
stripping
spitting
mocking
faux fawning
a crimson cloak
a thorny crown
nail, spear
vinegar swabs
and a long, long vigil.
Being the Christ involves…
an innocent man
hung out to die
as a criminal between criminals
on a cross
forsaken for all the forlorn
and fearful
and all the lawless
and corrupt
and confused
…for you and for all the world.
A beaten and bloodied
sin bearer, carrying the sins of his
whole wicked rogue
creation gone horribly wrong.
Being the Christ involves…
…the ‘Son of the living God’
suffering to bring back
and save all of God’s
lost and dead
daughters and sons.
And,
it involves…
taunting and tempting…
to do it another way
to come down from that cross
to be Christ a different way.
He does not come down.
He does back away.
He does not do it any other way
than the way that leads through
the cross and death and grave.
Today, in Caesarea Philippi,
the temple to Caesar lies in ruin, dead, just like Caesar.
But on the third day, Jesus was raised.
This Jesus, Son of the living God,
this Christ, lives and reigns over his creation.
And this Christ is not alone.
He builds a community,
gathers a people to be His own.
He builds a church, His church,
not on shifting sand or a fault line.
He builds not on jello or quicksand.
He builds not on the pastor’s personality, or love, or personal faith.
He builds not a wax museum of saints.
He builds not on politics, ethnicity, skin color, socio-economic sameness.
None of those things will hold out and endure against the assaults and the powers of sin, evil and hell itself.
Christ’s church is under constant assault and attack, always under siege by all that would destroy her: the powers/gates of hell, the world, our own fallen flesh battle against Christ and His church.
If it is to endure, He must build it.
He builds His church
on the only solid rock
that will hold.
Manhattan skyscrapers are built on an extremely hard rock layer that can support massive weight, up to 150 tons per square foot.
Japanese skyscrapers are different. They need to be built to withstand earthquakes.
So there, the buildings sit on layers of lead, steel, and High Damping Rubber Bearings to absorb earthquake shocks.
You might say they use a living foundation.
Our Lord Christ builds His church
on the solid rock,
but it is not a dead rock,
it is the rock of the Living God,
the living resurrected body
of Jesus Christ, the living rock.
And this Christ continues to speak.
He speaks His absolving Word to sinners of “every tribe and language and people and nation.” [Rev 5:9]
His living voice, His living Word…
His living, forgiving word
creates faith.
And where there is faith in His living word, there is His church.
He builds His church
on the only voice that matters,
on the living, breathing voice
of the good news
that silences the jaws of hell
by forgiving sin.
The Christ crammed His bloody cross into Lucifer’s craw, reducing his roar to a rasp.
He rolled away His grave stone and shoved it into the throat of hell to silence all accusation, every syllable that comes from the lips of Satan.
When your sins are forgiven
by the living, breathing Christ,
nothing and no one can destroy you,
not another person,
not Satan nor hell itself.
That is the firm foundation upon which
our Lord Jesus Christ builds His church.
And since He builds His church on forgiveness, as its rock solid foundation, it’s best to build your life and your home on it also.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock." Matt. 7:24-25
In the name of Jesus. [Amen.]
